


Somewhere on the Seventh Cloud

by Ramzes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Afterlife, Drama, Forgive and forget (not quite), Humour, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: A collection of oneshots about various members of our beloved/hated dragon family finding themselves in what passes for Targaryen heaven. Chapter 4): Dyanna.





	1. Baelor

For someone as grim as him, Maekar could make amazing japes. Baelor had always wished that other people could see this about his brother. He had wished that Maekar himself could see it even more. Alas, he was completely oblivious and for the first time, Baelor could not blame him.

After all, the jape was on him. And Baelor as well.

Baelor had a hard time believing that he was dead. In fact, he did not believe it until he saw the body curling on the pyre to ashes that also curled and the wind carried some of it away before cooling it and making it possible for the others to gather it in a urn. Baelor wondered which part of him had just been blown away. The most… masculine one? He hoped it was the hand that had been unable to reflect Maekar's blow in time. Save both of them.

No. Too tiny for a hand. Perhaps a finger. Sighing, he turned and blinked when he found himself in a hall that greatly resembled the throne room, up to the dragon skulls adorning the walls. Baelor was somewhat disappointed. Could this be the Targaryen afterlife if the dragons _stayed_ dead? "Why are you dead?" he asked them.

"Hush," a familiar voice said and he spun around. His mother stood there, her hair black and her face smooth. How was it possible? She was dead… and then he remembered that now, so was he. He looked at her again. She seemed… well, she seemed a few years younger than him. He glanced down at himself and realized that his hands looked… different. Younger.

"I think you're twenty five," his mother helped him.

"Twenty nine," he said immediately and wondered how he knew. She nodded.

"When you became your Father's Hand and everyone admitted your excellence," she said and smiled. "As a mother, I was very proud."

Hers was a sad smile, though, and he looked away. "We weren't very smart about it, were we?" he said. "He didn't do it on purpose, Mother," he was quick to add and for the first time realized, horrified, that his father might think that Maekar _had_.

She sighed. "Of course he didn't do it on purpose but the fact is, it was his hands dealing the blow. He won't forget it. And I wish we had gotten the two of you used to never coming close to each other with arms close."

"Too late for this," Baelor said because this conversation corresponded too well to the sadness now lodged within him. "Is Jena around?"

"She didn't want to watch," Mariah said. "I can't blame her. _I_ didn't want to watch either. She'll come soon, I expect. Come on, let me show you around."

Baelor grinned. "This is the Red Keep, Mother," he said. "I know it as well as you."

"This is the Red Keep and it isn't," she corrected. "You'll see. Just don't mention anything about the dragons being dead because Baelor will start praying for their rebirth and I don't think I can live through this."

Ever the knight, Baelor decided not to remind her that well, she could not live through this anyway. His moved to the table and took the closest one of the three goblets at this end. "Don't!" his mother warned him immediately. "Smell it before you drink."

He did so and it was just as good because he barely managed to put it back in place instead of letting it crash on the floor. "What's this?" he spluttered. "Horse piss?"

"I won't be surprised."

Baelor stared and took a seat because his feet felt suddenly weak. "This is our heaven?" he managed. "The place where we must drink horse piss?"

"There are some great wines," Mariah soothed. "Just be careful what you let cross your lips, that's all."

Baelor would ask for further instructions tomorrow. Perhaps the foul taste would have left his nostrils by then. His mother smelled another goblet, nodded in a satisfied way and when he refused, took a long gulp herself. Baelor's eyes almost popped out but then he reminded himself that today was her son's funeral after the accidental murder committed by her other son. If there had ever been the time for a heavenly hangover, it was today.

"Girl, you only got sober about an hour ago or so," a voice came. An aging woman appeared out of nothing and although she did not look much like the portraits Baelor had seen, she matched the descriptions to the last letter, up to the straight back.

"You're Queen Alysanne, are you not?" he asked and she nodded curtly.

"I wonder why the best of us are always taken in their prime," she said. "I had such hopes for you… Wont you leave this goblet already?" she asked and reached for it but Mariah didn't let go. "Honestly!" Alysanne said, irrated. "I know it's sad and all this but if I got drunk for a week each time one of my children died, I would have spent three full months inebriated!"

"I will pray for her," Naerys said, appearing with her a book in her hands. A book on the Faith, Baelor was sure. Dressed like a septa. Looking as if she would starve herself to death – actually, it was a miracle that she had not! A miracle – or a hefty amount of hatred for her brother-husband. She looked about… thirteen and this thinness was the only thing that helped Baelor recognize her. "As I will for Maekar."

"Maekar doesn't need your prayers!" Mariah snapped. "It was a _mishap_!"

"The Seven see no difference," Naerys said sadly.

"They should," Baelor said firmly and took his mother's hand. "Are you going to show me around?" he asked and only took a breath when they were safely away – walking. This appearing out of nowhere made him uneasy.

"It's quite overwhelming when you first come here," Mariah said. "I swear I felt like shrieking for three days straight. But it gets easier with time… ah, well, there are some things that one can never get used to…"

Baelor drew her behind a statue in the gallery that they were crossing. "Who are these?" he whispered.

"The Young Dragon," she replied. "In full armour as he often does. I swear he thinks he can descend on a cloud or something and raze Dorne to the ground. He often vows he will. I don't think he has grasped that his being dead is _permanent_."

Baelor was not surprised. From what he had heard about the Young Dragon, the boy had had no idea of his own mortality. "So, do you usually hide from them?" he asked. "Who is the other one, by the way?"

"No," Mariah replied, looked at the goblet she was still holding and sadly realized it was empty. "Only when my son dies."

The two men passed so close to them that Baelor could have reached out and touched them – the boy and the older man.

"King Viserys," Mariah whispered needlessly because the man was already explaining with forced patience that whatever brilliant plans Daeron had for destroying Dorne, there was no chance for them to hand them to someone living.

"You sound like the Dornish witch," the boy complained and Baelor tensed and made a movement towards him but his mother stopped him.

"He doesn' t mean me," she whispered and sure enough, in just a few heartbeats the Dornish witch herself appeared from… somewhere. Dyanna Dayne. Dyanna Targaryen. With tears of grief and anger on her cheeks. Baelor, ever the gallant, inclined his head.

"Welcome, Brother," she said. "I can't say I'm pleased to see you but you're welcome."

He blinked. Such sincerity from her, of all people? "You mean I let myself be killed?" he guessed and by her expression he could see that he was right. "May I remind you that it was your husband who killed me on behalf of your son who was lying?"

Dyanna did not flinch. "May I remind you that my husband was your brother long before he became my husband and that if you were so keen on justice, you could have started with the lie concocted on behalf of your own son, the supposedly great warrior? I mean, who are you to talk about mine? Not that I don't hope Maekar will get some sense into him," she muttered to herself. "If he's sending him to Essos, he must do so while making sure that Aerion has no means, else it'll be of no use. Anyway, I am sorry you are dead," she added and her voice sounded sincere. "It was well before your time and the circumstances were terrible."

 _If I died well before my time, then what should we say about you?_ Baelor wondered. He had had thirty-nine years of good life lived to the full; Dyanna had died after months of agony in the day of her twenty-seventh nameday. Staring at her, he noticed something strange: unlike the rest of them who he suspected were at the best age they had ever been in their lives, Dyanna wore one of the gowns with a cut hiding her mutilated breast. She looked about twenty-three or four. After the Stranger had touched her. Why?

He nodded, accepting the truce offered. "I was sorry when you died as well," he said and Dyanna suddenly grinned.

"We sound a little mad, don't we? Isn't there some wine to be had? We'll drink a goblet each and by then, I reckon that Jena would have appeared. This is a reunion, after all, no matter the circumstances. This way," she added, indicating where Baelor should go. "No, I'll come with you. The Red Keep has this habit of… changing. It takes time to learn to navigate it. When I first came here, the moat appeared in the middle of the throne room and I fell straight on the rusty spears. I think my guide hoped that I'd die there again or if not, at least suffer as much as I did."

Baelor laughed, as always amused by her descriptions and imagination. "Who was your guide?" he asked.

"I didn't know it at the time," Dyanna said sullenly, ashamed. "Best looks and all. It was your grandfather."

Well, perhaps this was _not_ her imagination. "You mentioned goblets?" he asked, feeling that he needed one. A goblet first and Jena next.

Perhaps this _was_ heaven, after all.

 


	2. Daeron the Good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, a_lady and Riana1, for commenting!

For all the fascination and reverie that books and scrolls held for him, there were certain claims in them that he was quite skeptical of and the description of the afterlife was one of them. How could the maesters _know_? It wasn't as if someone had ever gone there and _returned_ to tell the tale. In truth, Daeron held more faith in his grandson and namesake's dreams than he did in the afterlife part in any parchment. Perhaps because the Targaryens had already had people like young Daeron and they had been proven right, partly, at least, while the religious visions of King Baelor had only led to death. His own.

Or perhaps Daeron simply had more of his father in him than he'd like to admit. King Aegon had little respect for the Faith's teachings.

At any case, Daeron had always believed that death was the end of everything. And when it came, he did not even mind it. He had long ago started thinking that he had stayed on this earth for too long. He would have happily died before he realized that the plague seemed set to decimate his realm and he could do nothing. Before his grandsons died, adding the worry about the succession to his grief. Certainly before Baelor died by Maekar's hand.

Not that he thought about these things when the disease stormed into his chambers. Albeit brief, its duration was an agony that left no room for anything else. But he had these thoughts before it came and he had them when he rose from his pyre while _staying there at the same time_. As he found himself in the throne room and spun around, terrified of what he would see behind, the sight made him stop dead in his tracks. Dead. Of course.

Mariah's lips almost smiled. In the stateliness of the throne room, she looked as young as when she had been his glorious young queen, yet she was dressed in the attire he liked best, a green dress that was quite informal and she had worn it only in the privacy of their own chambers. When she moved, a stir of the air brought to him the faint whiff of the scent he loved best on her, something heavy and of the night, something that reminded him of rose and amber, and her favourite blood oranges at the same time.

But then he remembered what was the last thing he had heard before he felt the first symptoms of the plague. How could he have forgotten, even for a minute!

"No," his queen said immediately, as if she had read his thoughts. "Rhae isn't here. She made it. She's going to recover."

Daeron stared at her, not daring to rejoice. A tiny slip of a girl who caught every childhood's disease around had managed to do what robust men had not? But Mariah would not lie to him. He looked away and she allowed him his space until he got his feelings under control. Then, he looked at her. "So, it's real, then?" he asked. "This is afterlife? Is this what they call heaven or hell?"

Mariah snorted. "Sometimes, I'm not quite sure. I can't say I'm happy to see you here but… I've missed you."

He made a step towards her and finally did what he had been longing to – took her hand. It felt divinely warm and real in his and he suddenly felt the emptiness of all those years when he had not held it. She had distanced herself from him when he had sent Aemon to the Citadel and she had been almost unfailing in her determination but now, she acted as if she had forgotten all about it. "So, you have forgiven me at last?" he asked casually but his heart skipped a beat anyway.

"He looks happy now," she said. "And grudges cannot last forever."

Hers could and had but Daeron did not remind her about this. He simply enjoyed the renewed closeness that they had just fallen back into. Looking at himself, he realized he was the same age as her, as he had been in their shared life.

Unfortunately, this moment of bliss lasted as about too many similar moments in the beginning of their shared life.

"So, you finally made it," a sickeningly familiar voice said. Daeron did not need to turn back to see who the speaker was.

"I'm happy to see you as well, Father," he said tiredly. "You were saying something about hell?" he added to Mariah, not bothering to lower his voice. Aegon was fully informed of what his son's attitude to him was.

"You mean I'm your hell?" Aegon's perception of this idea was evident by the sneer in his voice. Unsurprised, Daeron saw that his father looked somewhere in his middle twenties. He was starting to realize that in this place, people were at their best age and Aegon's years of kingship were undoubtedly his worst. He even had this tanned complexion that, together with the age, made Daeron suspect that this was the Aegon who had returned from Dorne after taking part in the submission of Sunspear. "You've always had some strange ideas. You've been wed to _her_ most of your life but I'm your hell?"

Mariah smiled and Daeron followed. He would pay to see the first exchanges between his father and his wife. Here, Aegon was not the man Mariah had always been forced to take into consideration in her conduct. Instead, he did what he had always longed to do and been unable to in twelve long years: he turned his back on Aegon and asked Mariah, "So, is Baelor here?"

"Don't you dare ignore me!" Aegon said angrily.

"Why?" Daeron asked. "What are you going to do, take my son hostage, or start a new rumour? What?"

"Yes, he's here," Mariah said, delaying the clash without it being her intention. "Right now, he isn't in his best mood, so I guess we won't be seeing him for a while." Her face fell. "I can't fault him. I was heartbroken when the boys arrived."

Aegon looked up from the goblet that he was pouring himself. Strange enough, he seemed to be sniffing at it as he poured liberally. "Of course you were heartbroken," he said contemptuously. "Your father's neat little plan failed thoroughly, did it not?"

Daeron blinked. In all the years he had spent despising his father, he often thought that he had finally gotten some idea how Aegon's mind worked, only to later realize how little he knew. But this time, Mariah seemed bemused as well. "My father's plan?"

"To weaken our House. Make us lose our Valyrian traits. You almost succeeded with this Dornish son of yours – and then his sons looked nothing like Targaryens. Of course you were heartbroken. Your bid failed."

Daeron wondered if his father truly believed this. Even Aegon could not be as deluded as to believe Mariah or her father could control such things. _Plan_ for them. Especially when Mariah had left nothing of herself in her younger three sons. Some good plan, this one was! Who had said, "It's obvious who their father is. Now, about the mother…" Elaena?

Mariah smiled Aegon's own contempt back at him. "My bid came true," she said easily. "No matter what, my blood will flourish on the Iron Throne and I am seared in their thinking and behavior while you are forever sealed out of influencing any of the Targaryen kings. Dorne will become greater and more powerful and my descendants will play a part in this."

She looked at Daeron. "Come on, let me show you around."

It would be quite presumptuous of her to show him around his own castle that, unlike her, he had been born in. But this was not the Red Keep. Despite the likeness, it wasn't that and Daeron felt even more sure when he realized that the halls were longer than they should be, as if they elongated in reaction to his and Mariah's wish to make the walk last. "Has he ever… done something to you?" Daeron finally asked, not quite sure what he was asking. "Wounds sustained here are real, are they not?"

She shrugged, obviously unconcerned, and stopped to pick up a lovely yellow flower. "They are but the first time he became physical in his anger, I threatened to curse his manhood. This stopped him immediately."

Yes, Daeron imagined that it would. And if his father believed that Mariah had arranged Baelor's looks, he could certainly believe that she was a true witch. He had positively behaved as if she were during his lifetime.

"I can see I have much to learn about this place," he said. "It's the same and yet, it isn't."

"I'm going to help you," she promised. "Remember, whatever happens here, it can't make the past worse than it was. Whatever happens here stays here."

He scowled at her. "It isn't my father," he stated. "Who are you warning me about?"

"I imagine it's about me," a dreadfully familiar voice said. Mariah spun around and shot the intruder a look of pure fury.

"I swear, boy, I was underestimating you when I repeatedly warned Daeron about you. I thought you just wanted more than what you were give. I'm now starting to think that you are just driven by the lowest of instincts. Couldn't you leave me and my husband alone? Did you spy on us in our private chambers in the Red Keep, or what?"

Daemon paid her no attention. Instead, he looked at Daeron, his face a curious mix of utter defiance and belated regret. "Look, I didn't mean for things to happen this way, you know?"

And now, Daeron discovered something about himself. He could bear grudges even better than Mariah. After thirteen years, his anger at Daemon was as fierce as in the day he had ascertained the boy's intentions. He smiled. Death had freed him from the chains of ruling but also the chains of responsibility – for peace, stability, family. Finally, after all those years when he had been trying to influence Daemon into honour by treating him with honour, he could tell the boy what his real opinion on him was.

"I know. What does it matter?"

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year to everyone! I hope it's a gorgeous one!


	3. Maekar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for commenting and sorry about the delay!

A rock. A rock. Maekar was not surprised. This was what could be expected of House Peake – never a fair fight. He was immensely disappointed, though, for this was not how he had envisioned his death. He had always imagined a proper battle, not a thing that would not leave much of him to be retrieved.

He was also a little… proud, as ridiculous as it was. For all the stormy events in his life, it had taken a bloody rock to take him down. A proper rock. But he was sorry for Swift. Such an amazing battle horse. He had deserved better, whatever divine punishment his master had merited. Maekar looked over his shoulder, hoping despite reason to see that Swift could still be saved. Of course, he couldn't, Maekar saw it even through the circle of men scrambling to get his own dead, beaten body out.

"A little proud, are we?" a voice that he had only been hearing in his dreams for over twenty-four years asked. His heart in his throat, he turned… and everything fell back in place.

Baelor wore the face he had worn when he had been about thirty, and a wide grin on that face. All of a sudden, Maekar felt stupid beyond belief. How many a night he had laid awake, wondering if in these final moments Baelor had thought that Maekar had meant it? As if it had ever been a real possibility!

"No, no, do not apologize," Baelor said quickly, raising his hands to prevent such a thing happening. "I've been watching you for over two decades and I say that you have more than served your sentence. Now, about this rock…" He smirked. "I always did tell you that you needed a rock to best you, did I not? A rock against a rock."

"You did," Maekar confirmed and for the first time in over twenty years took a full breath. He had never tasted air this sweet. Especially not in the Red Keep.

He looked at his reflection in the side of the goblet Baelor handed him with the strange warning to sniff it first. He looked… young. About twenty. No, younger. If Baelor looked his best age, it made sense that Maekar would too… and the year when he had been twenty had been one of the worst in his life, with Dyanna's terrible ailment. Nineteen, then. He frowned. He did not feel nineteen. He felt the weight of each one of his years and then some.

Baelor nodded. "It's odd indeed," he agreed. "But it will pass. You are the age you look like but at the same time, you feel the burden of your lifetime experiences."

"Quite odd." Maekar turned back, staring at the battlefield. "Do they need to waste all this effort so retrieve a body?" he asked, irritation stealing in his voice. "They have a battle to win."

His brother stared at him and then laughed, shaking his head. "I can't believe you," he said. "I just… can't believe you. It's _your_ body we're talking about… but that's what Fireball always taught us, right? The one who wants to win needs to stare right ahead, at the victory and nothing else."

His smile died as they both remembered that this was the reason Baelor had died twenty-four years before his time… Maekar's focus. They looked away from each other.

"That's better," a vaguely familiar voice said from behind and yet Maekar was sure he had never seen the man who had appeared from nowhere… or the throne room. Oh, he was a Targaryen, this fair hair and the purple eyes left no doubt. Finely chiseled features… Maekar could imagine that the newcomer could be quite charming when he wanted to but personally, right now he found nothing prepossessing n this faint smile and the glint in the eyes that could be taken as humourous but Maekar could immediately see that it was nothing other than a smirk. "I've always wondered if Baelor was indeed this nonchalant about the fact that you killed him. It isn't natural. Even the Dornish would think so."

Baelor sighed. "Pay him no mind," he advised. "Once you get better at arranging your environment, he's going to disappear or… not appear."

Maekar gasped. "Do you seriously suggest that I… hide from him? Is this what you're doing?"

"He's quite good at this," the man answered instead of Baelor.

_Instead of Baelor._

"Is he speaking for us already?" Maekar asked, quite calmly in his own estimation. "Am I supposed to let him speak for _me_?"

Baelor gave him an urgent look. "Listen, Maekar, don't…"

Too late. Maekar drew his hand back and his fist connected with the mildly smirking face. With a soft splashing sound, a spurt of blood erupted from the other's nose. Maekar listened intently but there was no sharper sound. The man reeled back.

"What?" Baelor exclaimed. "You broke _my_ nose but you didn't do it with _his_?"

Maekar snorted a disbelieving laugh. "Are you offended?" he asked.

"To the seven hells, yes, I am!" Given to his memory, Baelor absent-mindedly rubbed the bridge of his own nose and the two of them headed down the hall, leaving the bleeding man behind. Maekar turned once to look at the battlefield but Baelor firmly dragged him on.

"You can't do anything. If you watch too long, you'll go mad with the urge and inability to help."

Maekar doubted that true madness was possible for one who had not got it in life but he did not object. He simply followed his brother's lead. "So, who was this one?" he asked. "Looked quite unpleasant."

"He was," Baelor said. "You just had the honour to meet our lord grandfather in his prime."

This stunned Maekar speechless. He had heard many people say that his grandfather had used to look like something but he had not expected to be unable to recognize him. No wonder that Aegon had been a constantly embittered, petty man – he had literally been digging his own grave for years and he had known it. But he felt the warm glow of contentment. How often in his childhood years spent in King's Landing on Aegon's will and whims had he dreamed of the time he would grow old and big enough to squash his grandfather like a bug?

Baelor looked around, his smile showing that despite his restrain, he was not displeased as well. "Who are you looking for?" Maekar asked. "Father?"

The suggestion came to his mind spontaneously. While Daeron Targaryen had always insisted that violence was the last resource smart people should turn to, Maekar did have the strong feeling that right now, he would have said…

"That's a good boy," Baelor said seriously but his eyes were laughing. "Here, I said it for him."

Maekar didn't say anything, his mind racing from the moments he had heard this in his childhood, both absent-mindedly and in those great moments when their father had actually paid attention to what he did, to the moment he had heard what had happened to Baelor. What he had done to Baelor. He shook his head. "No," he said.

_You are a good boy,_ Baelor thought. You didn't mean it and as prickly and unapproachable you are when you're offended, you did all you could to rule well. _I know it and he knows it. It's different now._ But there would be no use to say it. It was not different for Maekar. Not yet. He would see how different it was in this afterlife, in time. He looked around, thinking that Dyanna should have been here. Her exchanges with Aegon were legendary. Last time, she had snapped that her husband would teach Aegon his place for her in the only way Aegon could understand. Maekar had done this – and Dyanna had not been here to see. I'll have to remember all of this to tell her later, Baelor thought. Dyanna was prone to roasting everyone slowly for the tiniest details – and expected people to tell stories like she did. But well, this was a story that Baelor would not mind telling over and over for her sake, and his own.

Dyanna appeared from a side door as they were crossing a marble-floored court and Maekar stopped dead in his tracks. For years he had tried to summon this exact image into his mind – the lovely girl from before the illness. Fair skin glowing with life, a sparkle in violet eyes casting wit and enticement from under lowered eyelashes, dark hair cascading wildly down her back in the privacy of their own chambers... This had been the only way to keep his sanity because if he did not succeed to push the image of her last months away, he would have started screaming.

But here she was, smiling this smile of joy and welcome that had always made him feel alive. Her eyes were brimming with tears which made him think that she was sad about him being dead, although this had brought him to her, at last. She was warm and felt real, her heart beating as quickly as his – he could feel it through the fabrics. But he felt something else as well and drew back, surprised, to give her another look.

Now, her smile became one of grief. "Yes," she said. "I am twenty-two indeed."

"Why?" he asked, stunned. With everyone here being the years that had been their best, that meant that Dyanna had felt this way after the first bout of illness? After the removal of the lump? After she had been too afraid to leave her chambers because of what she perceived as her mutilation?

"You never believed me when I told you I was the happiest I had ever been in my life then, did you?"

"No," he replied truthfully. He had always taken it for one the tales Dyanna had lo loved to spin, one of her ways to make life better, something that she had done for him. It had never occurred to him that it might be the truth.

She nodded dejectedly. "Saryl used to tell me that you didn't seem to believe me," she confessed. "I only believed her… after. To her credit, once she arrived, she never told me, _I told you so_."

His surprise was overwhelming. He looked around, as if he expected for Saryl Lothston to appear, invoked by the mentioning. "She's here as well?"

Dyanna shrugged. "She never had much of a family before she came back to Summerhall after my death," she said. "Her time with her husband was too short. Of course she's here. As unhappy as this used to make me, she's now one of us."

An unhappy Dyanna was a Dyanna who became even more inventive. Maekar's focus suddenly cleared because _this_ meant danger. "You said it _used_ to make you unhappy?" he asked cautiously.

Dyanna sighed and started walking him around a Red Keep that was and was not the same he knew. The changes were subtle and seemed to… be taking place? Like, now? "You know, at the time she got her treatment, we used to sit and wonder if it had been successful. I went so far as to suggest that she found a man to… test it. She was shocked," Dyanna admitted honestly. "But you see, I never offered _you_. Of course I used to be unhappy! I wanted to be your only one even after my death."

"You were," he said. "For a long time."

"But not forever." Dyanna sighed. "Well, I didn't really expect it, so I was able to make my peace with it – and her. She was my friend, after all. We reached an agreement."

Maekar wasn't sure that he liked the talk about agreement, especially when knowing that he was not about to be asked if _he_ agreed with it. And he had the feeling that he knew what they had agreed upon. Sharing him? He would now live with two women in turns? Three, once Aelinor's time came as well? In the afterlife? When he had been _faithful_ each bloody time? It felt foul. This was a situation worthy for Aegon the Unworthy, not for a man like him! But as unholy as the agreement looked to him, he couldn't come with anything better. He certainly didn't want to live alone - and he could never choose. The type of bond had been different with each woman but they had all been strong.

Still, a week only had seven days. They could never be divided equally. He could already hear – and agree with – Baelor's comment, once his brother realized what the situation was. "The best part of it? You have one day off."

 


	4. Dyanna

Silence. It was all there was.

Dyanna listened desperately.

Silence.

She flicked her fingers, realized that her movements were fluid, unburdened by pain or the milk of the poppy. She moved her head and she could do it without the white pain or the fuzziness that left her desperate and lost. For the first time in months, she felt like herself and yet all she cared about was the sound that would not come.

Silence.

They were now undressing and washing her body and Dyanna saw, for the first time, the ruin that the disease had turned her into. The remains of her breast had turned into a wound worse than anything she had seen at the study of the maester in Starfall, worse than what Maekar’s arm had looked like after Redgrass Field. An area of blackened flesh and whitish puss; Dyanna knew that the stench rising from her made the poor women gag and she did not care. She only wanted to leave the room she had died in and go out, find out…

A faint wail.

A babe’s crying! She heard a babe’s crying and she knew it was her newborn babe. Alive. Sweet relief almost made her collapse, fall back into the worn out body that she had just left.

Her babe was crying – and soon, so was she, because this little girl would grow up without ever seeing her mother. But eventually, a young terrified girl gave the breast to the newborn and Dyanna had little choice but turn back and see the place she had found herself in – or watch her loved ones receive the news of her passing.

She chose examining her new surroundings because she simply could not bear to see the pain writ plain on Maekar’s face. Her children’s. Her mother and brother’s. She looked around and realized that she was in the Red Keep. The Red Keep?

“Well, if this isn’t the Dornish lass,” a voice drawled and Dyanna bristled even before she turned left and her eyes fell on the dashing young man with fair hair and a fair blade who gave her a mocking bow. A Targaryen, no doubt. A long dead Targaryen. Dyanna shuddered before she remembered that now, this described her as well.

“I suppose there aren’t many Dornish here?” she asked.

“There is one too many,” he replied and while there was no doubt as to what he meant, there could be no mistake about the look he was giving her – appreciative and leery. Dyanna had not seen the latter in over twelve years, when she had been a young maiden fresh at court, with her beauty and her Dornish reputation, before her betrothal took place. While this infuriated her, she could not help but wonder what she looked like now. The creature that she had become during the last seven months could not attract anyone’s eye, except to inspire pity and fear.

“The King doesn’t agree,” she replied and her calm voice seemed to take him aback. She wondered if he had looked down as she had done mere moments ago, if he knew that she had never taken offences lying down, even before she became Daeron’s gooddaughter.

His eyes weren’t just narrow, she realized. They were quite small and this somewhat marred his handsomeness. Eyes were the mirror of one’s soul, her grandmother said. Dyanna had always shied away from people with small eyes.

He huffed. “The King! If it was up to me…”

“But it wasn’t, was it?” Dyanna interrupted, almost certain who stood before her but not quite. “So, this is his castle and I was his choice.”

Arguing with him distracted her from the urge to turn back and see how the ones she had left behind fared now. Did time go differently here? Was it still the day of her death, the twenty-seventh nameday she should have had, or had a month passed? A year?

He snorted. “Do you want me to show you around?” he asked and looked surprised when she accepted. He had no way of knowing that his vitriol would keep her occupied enough to not give up to the temptation, turn back and look…

“The Red Keep is generally the way you remember it,” he explained. “For everyone. This is why, when two people’s differing perceptions come too close, discrepancies happen.”

His tone was so smooth that it would be easy to forget the derision from such a short time ago. Despite herself, Dyanna felt curious. “What discrepancies?”

A strange humming filled the air; a moment later, it turned into a never-ending vibration, like a huge drum beating from a distance. The walls went farther and the floor gaped open.

“Like this one,” her companion said as she fell down towards the rusty spikes that littered the moat surrounding Maegor’s Holdfast.

The pain was blinding, numbing, deafening, much like the pain in her diseased  breast had been. Dyanna opened her mouth to scream, could not, watched helplessly as everything turned blind.

“You’re going to recover in a few days,” a soft voice said and she blinked as she found herself swathed in even bigger curtain of whiteness. White curtains, white sheets, the white hair of the woman sitting at her bedside…

“Queen Alysanne?” she asked and the old lady smiled.

“I’ve always wanted to get to know a Dornish girl under other circumstances than the ones we had,” she said. “I’ll teach you to hold your own visuals more stable, so no one will be able to draw you into their own.”

“Did he?” Dyanna asked. “Aegon?”

Alysanne shook her head. “I doubt it. He doesn’t really have the determination to keep his mind pointed at one direction. More likely, he just used someone else’s distorted memories and pushed you into them. This, he excels at.”

“I can imagine,” Dyanna muttered. Sometimes, as they lay at one pillow, Maekar had mentioned something about his life with his grandfather.

Maekar…

Despite Alysanne’s attempts to stop her, she pushed herself upright, made it to the window, pushed the curtains aside and looked down, focusing on what she wanted to see… which was not a pyre with a body, her own, atop of it. She remembered that she had wished for a fish funeral, pay the fish back for all the fish she had consumed in her life… but looking at herself, she had to realize that there was not much left to give to the sea. She tried to look away from the devastation writ across the faces of everyone around but it held her transfixed, as did the helpless rage in Ultor’s eyes as he drew his hand back to get greater strength in his blow as he aimed it at Maekar who did not waste any time retaliating.

Dyanna gasped, horrified. “What…”

“Your brother blames him,” Alysanne said reluctantly. “As far as I can say, he wanted to have the red woman cut the swell off your breast once again but Maekar refused.”

“Yes,” Dyanna said impatiently, “because I insisted to wait until I gave birth. Last time, the surgery was cruel on me. There was no way for the babe to survive it…”

Even as she spoke, she knew that this did not matter to Ultor. She had been the one he loved but as much as she loved him for this, she wanted to slap him for doing this to Maekar.

“What is this place?” she asked when the unfolding horror finally became too big for her to bear, as underneath her Queen Mariah slowly rocked the new babe and Maekar said a few words to his mother but did not even look at the child. Rhae, her goodmother had named her. Child of the Stranger, the servants whispered. For Maekar, it could as well be Girl No One. “It doesn’t look like one of the seven heavens and I thought… I mean, I know I leaned on the shrewish side sometimes but I don’t think I was this much of a shrew?”

She was not jesting and Alysanne did not smile. “He didn’t think you were a shrew,” she said, looking down at Maekar. “Or if he did, he didn’t mind. But no, I don’t think it’s the seven heavens. This place just… is. I think a long conversation with some septons is in order but they don’t come here.”

“Of course not,” Dyanna muttered, wondering what else of the things she had been taught would turn out to be a lie.

During the next days, weeks, and months, she felt quite sure that this was, in fact, one of the seven hells. She stood transfixed, unable to tear her eyes away as Daeron drank straight from the bottle. As her younger children became more unruly than ever before, clinging and whiny, although they could not be missing her this much – in those last months, they had seen her just briefly. As Aerion claimed that the new babe would be feeble-minded and frail of health as she deserved… As Maekar went out for rides that seemed meant to break both his neck and that of the horse and when he was home, he did his best to avoid everyone – the children, his mother…

“He’s going to break his neck one of these days,” King Aegon often said with this sickening mix of delight and disgruntlement. Dyanna knew that he’d love to see Maekar dead, dearly, but with Maekar dead, Baelor would be known as the only son of Daeron who _mattered_. Neither Aerys nor Rhaegel could do something to even challenge this perception.

Just Maekar.

“He’s going to recover,” she snapped but like an animal, Aegon smelled her fear, her insincerity and his grin was such that she felt an even greater fear. He was just talented this way and her famed gift with words had left her.

People came to see her bur she paid them little notice: the tragic Queen Naerys, the sainted Baelor who could not fail to come and rejoice in the success of his peaceful overtures. In her. The second Viserys who said something strange, something about Dyanna and the first Dornishwoman at their court, Queen Mariah who laughed. Dyanna did not quite get it because her goodmother certainly did not. Not when she had to mother her grandchildren. Not when she could not reach Maekar, although he was there, right in front of her.

And then, one day, he spoke to the High Septon who could give him no answer, just empty platitudes. He went out for his most dangerous ride under a gushing of rain that turned the earth into a sea of mud that the horses had trouble getting out of and this seemed to delight him as he raised his face against the onslaught that hit him like hard stones and shouted out of grief and helplessness. She watched with her heart in her mouth as the maesters in the Red Keep washed him with hot towels and his eyes burned bright and feverish. The maesters did not leave, the Queen and King often came in as well but Rhaegel was the one who could calm Maekar down best. There was something in his soft voice that soothed even Dyanna and she was ashamed to remember the first thing she had ever said about him in front of Maekar, all those years ago – an offhanded comment of derision. Maekar had snapped at her immediately, as she had deserved.

The day Maekar rose from his sickbed and went to visit his mother, Dyanna held her breath with hope; when he asked to see the babe, she was ready to weep with relief.

“It was about time,” the Young Dragon said grimly. “Although I have no doubt that now, he’ll return to Summerhall and keep bestowing Dorne with favours that it doesn’t deserve at all.”

Dyanna slowly turned away from the sight underneath and looked at him. For the first time, she realized that he wore armour and sword, as if ready to ride into a battle. Here? She supposed she should feel some pity because even now, he was so young and it showed. But she found none. She had been born and raised in Dorne, after all. “Do you know what day it is today, Your Grace?” she asked without thinking.

He glanced at her. “No.”

“An anniversary of the day my lady mother killed your son, Your Grace,” Dyanna said without hesitation, wondering where this lie had come from. “In this day, she took abortificient.”

The reaction was just what she had expected: anger, disappointment, fury. She knew this kind of young men well enough. All this time here, he had been smarming inside, imagining just how much better an heir of his own body would have turned out than his weak brother or even worse namesake. This was the nature of men: they wanted to leave their blood behind, as well as conquer all they could. Dyanna uttered a silent apology to her mother in her head and realized that with the beginning of Maekar’s slow healing, she had started to heal as well. Accept her… unlife? Return to herself.

Now, she only had to wait and fear, and long for the day she’d be reunited with her loved ones.


End file.
